


nowhere left to stay

by writing_way_too_much



Series: better things fall together [3]
Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Non-Linear Narrative, Sailing, THE TITLE MAKES IT SOUND RLY ANGSTY I PROMISE ITS NOT THAT BAD, i mean it switches btwn present tense and things he's recalling about his past and such, junhyeok is aroace he just doesn't know the word for it, junhyeok makes friends with a seagull, kind of a character study kind of not, rated teen for junhyeok's dirty mouth, this turned out 3x longer than expected, wow hannah do u have enough tags or what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 12:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_way_too_much/pseuds/writing_way_too_much
Summary: the pier he ties his boat to is surprisingly well-kept for as bad as junhyeok heard australia’s been doing. it’s the only continent he hasn’t been to yet, not counting antarctica, because why the hell would he go to antarctica? penguins don’t get mail.





	nowhere left to stay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iwillalwaysbelieve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwillalwaysbelieve/gifts).



> hiii thank you to iwillalwaysbelieve for giving me the idea for this; i gifted the whole work to u hope u don't mind. it's less of him traveling and more of just him, if that makes sense, sorry, but i still rly like the way it turned out
> 
> this was NOT supposed to be 3.9k words but here we are whoops
> 
> important: there are mentions of many potentially triggering subjects in the paragraph where junhyeok is thinking about why he avoids the u.s. please do what's best for you.
> 
> title from day6's "stop the rain" (if you haven't listened to it yet stop reading this fic, go watch the mv a dozen times, and then come back)
> 
> i know nothing about sailing so i tried to keep the technical stuff to a minimum
> 
> disclaimer: this is completely fictitious. i own only the plot and the original characters

“fuck off!” junhyeok yells at the seagull who is determined to steal his lunch. “catch your own damn fish!”

the seagull lands on the roof of his tiny cabin and tilts its head at him. beady black eyes stare into junhyeok’s soul for a moment.

“you are a seagull,” he tries to explain, and okay, he’s probably spent a few too many days in the sun if he’s actually trying to rationalize with a  _ bird. _ jesus. “you catch your own food. you probably have it easier than i do. so stop trying to take mine.”

the seagull hops down onto the deck at junhyeok’s feet.

“go away.”

when it actually steps onto junhyeok’s bare foot (it’s easier to grip the deck with his toes), he yelps and kicks out, tossing the seagull all the way across the boat, which, to be fair, is not a very far distance. “yah, what the hell?”

if seagulls could harrumph, that is what this seagull would be doing.

“i’m still not going to give you any food,” junhyeok says, glaring at the bird.

the seagull lets out a loud caw and flies up to the top of junhyeok’s mast and perches there, seemingly content.

great. now junhyeok’s gonna have to deal with bird droppings.

  
  
  
  
  
  


when junhyeok was three, his aunt died.

she had been a teacher, had never moved out of the house she’d grown up in, stayed in one place her whole life. the korean peninsula was not that large, but she was right in the middle of it, and she had lived her whole life (all thirty-one years of it) without ever seeing the ocean.

“i’m not letting that happen to you, hyeok,” his father had said, picking up the little boy and leaving right in the middle of the funeral, while someone that junhyeok didn’t know was up at the podium suffering their way through a poorly-written eulogy. “i’m not letting you live a mediocre life.”

  
  
  
  


mediocre is definitely something his life has  _ not _ been.

  
  
  
  
  


the seagull will. not. leave. him. alone.

it’s almost like having a pet, except the pet could have fifteen different diseases and parasites, and sometimes flies off for hours at a time, and caws loudly right in his ear when he’s drifting off in the middle of the night without having put the anchor down.

“okay, bitch,” junhyeok tells it after a few days of this madness. “i don’t mind you hanging around me. it’s nice to have company on my voyages that don’t involve delivering people. what i do mind is the pecking and the cawing.”

_ so basically the integral parts of being a seagull _ , he imagines the bird to be saying. 

now he’s really lost it.

he sighs and runs his hands through his hair, bleached from the sun and salty from the sea air. the last time he actually put effort into his hair was pretty much never. sailors don’t care about their physical appearance, just the wind and the sea. he does have a lot of muscles, though. and  _ abs _ .

the seagull takes off from where it’s perched on top of his cabin, right at his face, and junhyeok backs up so fast that he trips and falls. the seagull flies straight up at the last moment, narrowly avoiding ramming into junhyeok at full tilt.

“thanks, asshole!” he shouts after it, as the seagull flies off into the sunset. “nearly killed me!”

he isn’t smiling as he navigates by the stars, unable to sleep that night. he isn’t.

  
  
  
  


junhyeok’s mother died giving birth to him, so for as long as he could remember, it was just him and his father.

his father was a fisherman, old-fashioned in every way but his fashion sense and music taste. he always smelled of salt and bait and his clothes were always damp. junhyeok loved it.

when it was safe to take junhyeok out on the water (safe meaning he was old enough to know not to tip himself over the edge), in the tiny old fishing skiff that had originally been his great-grandfather’s and was likely to be condemned soon, they almost never touched land again. 

junhyeok learned how to read the ocean, how to catch the wind in a sail. he learned how to fish without having to cease movement. he learned how to function on very little sleep. he learned how to read the stars. he learned how to put an anchor down and how to climb around in the rigging of the mast to fix the sail. he learned how to prepare fish so it was safe to eat and how to use a water filter to get drinking water. he learned how to weather storms and how to take care of himself when he got sick. he learned all this without a gps, without a radio, without anything technological.

it served him well, later on.

  
  
  
  
  


junhyeok sees land and almost cries.

it gets lonely sometimes, out on the ocean all by himself. he doesn’t want a romantic partner, god no, but a friend would be nice every once in a while. just to, like, read to him or something. he can’t read on boats. he gets motionsick.

_ you’ve spent your entire life on boats and you get motionsick _ ? he thinks the seagull asks when he voices these thoughts out loud.

“no, idiot, i--yeah. that’s beside the point. my  _ point _ is that i’m nearly out of food and i miss human contact and also i really need to deliver these fucking letters.”

it’s a whole thick stack of letters, bound together with string and tape. a community’s worth of words. notes, promises, funny moments, jokes, nostalgic tales. junhyeok hasn’t snooped, he never looks at the letters he’s delivering, but he can tell what they contain by the looks on the faces of those handing them to him and those reading them at the final destination.

this one is special, though. half of a community made it out of a dangerous zone. half didn’t. junhyeok is taking letters from the ones who got away to the ones who didn’t.

he isn’t even sure if they will still be there.

the pier he ties his boat to is surprisingly well-kept for as bad as junhyeok heard australia’s been doing. it’s the only continent he hasn’t been to yet, not counting antarctica, because why the hell would he go to antarctica? penguins don’t get mail.

it’s always a shock when he first stands back on dry land, no matter how long he’s been on his boat for. secretly, junhyeok dreads it when people are there to welcome him, because it means that they’ll see when he just about falls flat on his face with how wobbly his legs are.

today, thankfully, the pier is deserted. so is the rest of the shoreline, as far as junhyeok can see. the only sign of life is a dusty footpath with one set of prints, going to and from the ocean.

he doesn’t try to step out of his boat; rather, he sits on the edge of the boat, scoots to the pier, makes sure his entire ass is on solid ground, and then sits there for a moment to adjust.

the seagull is laughing at him, he can tell.

junhyeok stands after a few minutes and tucks the letters under one arm, his empty bag for food hanging off of the other shoulder, and starts along the footpath.

  
  
  
  
  


the end of the world was honestly incredibly inconvenient, and not just because it was, y’know, the fucking end of the goddamn world.

junhyeok’s father had just died, taken by a sudden heart attack. junhyeok had given his body back to the sea, as he had always wanted, and then thrown up over the side and laid in his cabin, anchor down, for five days straight. they had just gotten the new boat, which still smelled like freshly sanded wood, and were going to...well, they hadn’t gotten that far. but junhyeok was twenty-one and his father was forty-two and they were just going to live, out on the ocean, like they always had.

so when he finally got to land, a port somewhere in canada, it was a humongous shock to learn that, uh, the world had kind of ended. wow.

in his state of grief, at both the loss of his father and society as he had known it, he had gone back to his boat but just huddled in port for a week or so, unable to process anything, until someone had approached him and asked about his boat.

“do you sail with technology?”

it was a girl about his age, a little younger, and she had a carefully wrapped package in her hands.

sailing all around the world, junhyeok had picked up on bits of many different languages, and he was not the worst at english. “no.”

she had bitten her lip and said, quickly, “could you deliver this for me? my best friend’s birthday is tomorrow, but she’s still back in britain, and i can’t get this to her, but i’ve never missed her birthday. i’ll pay you for it.”

junhyeok had asked her to please repeat all that, slower, but eventually she got her point across and junhyeok figured why the hell not? it would be an easy way to earn money, and looking around, he was the only person with these types of qualifications.

so it began.

now, nearly three years after the world has ended but humanity is still going strong, junhyeok’s accidentally developed a reputation on all continents as “that one snarky sailor who shows up infrequently and gives you updates on the world and delivers your mail and possibly you.” he didn’t mean for that to happen. whoops.

(a little boy in south africa told him, in broken english, that he gave people hope. junhyeok scoffed at the idea--that’s ridiculous--but the earnest look in the little boy’s eyes has stuck with him for a long, long time.)

  
  
  
  


there is a village at the end of the footpath.

it has crude walls several feet high that look like they were once intimidating, with bones arranged on the top, but they’re crumbling and have several holes. the people who emerge from the houses that look as if a good strong wind might knock them over are lean and angry looking, but when junhyeok holds up the letters, their anger switches to confusion, and then elation.

“are those from the rest of us?” a man who seems to be the leader asks. junhyeok takes a second to adjust to his strong australian accent.

“yeah. they think of you all the time.”

he doesn’t learn anyone’s name because nobody bothers to tell him and he’s afraid to ask. this is definitely one of the harshest places he’s been to. of the three nights he spends there, two are spent mostly awake, sitting against the wall, terrified of the raiding gangs the leader-type-person has warned him about, and on the third night, when the raiders do come by and knock down a section of wall and burn down a thankfully unoccupied house, junhyeok decides that it is well past time for him to leave.

he gathers letters from anyone who wanted to write them. it’s a pitifully small stack compared to what he brought, but he’s so desperate to get out of this dangerous place that he just takes what they have and promises to deliver.

once out of sight of the village, junhyeok breaks into a sprint, clutching the letters to his chest, now-full bag of food bouncing on his back. they paid him in food. they don’t have any money. food is more valuable in this new world anyway.

when he reaches the dock, he is incredibly relieved to see that his boat is completely whole and undamaged. none of the raiders decided to come this far.

junhyeok stumbles onto his boat and collapses onto the wood, breathing hard, and just lies there for a second, taking it in. his boat. his safety. his home.

“are you the sailor?”

junhyeok does not scream. that is very unmanly. he  _ might _ emit a shriek several octaves higher than his normal speaking voice. might.

a teenage girl is sitting on the roof of his cabin. he isn’t sure how he didn’t notice her before. she has curly red hair and a face dotted with freckles. she frowns down at his sprawling figure. “okay. i assume that yes, you are the sailor, because you kissed the wood of this boat, and if the smell is anything to go by, fish go on that floor, and nobody except the sailor would ever possibly even think to do that.”

damn. junhyeok kind of likes her. “what’s your name, kid?” he asks, forcing himself to stand.

“jess. take me out of here. please.”

  
  
  
  


the seagull returns.

junhyeok isn’t sure how he knows that it’s the same seagull, but he does. it judges him in exactly the same way when he eats.

“is that your pet?” jess asks. they’ve been at sea for only a day and she’s adjusted pretty well to both the constant rocking and eating mostly fish. “it seems to recognize you.”

“how old are you?”

“sixteen.”

“how are you so receptive for sixteen?”

jess shrugs. “my parents always said i was bright.”

the ocean is calm today, a mild breeze propelling them across the expanse of blue, so smooth it looks like polished glass. “didn’t care about leave them?”

“raiders.”

junhyeok nods, unsure of how to respond to that. he settles for patting her shoulder awkwardly. “where do you want me to take you?”

“anywhere,” jess says. “somewhere safe. somewhere warm. somewhere just  _ away _ .”

the seagull caws from the top of the mast. junhyeok stands and stretches. “i can do that for ya.”

  
  
  


the pier was taken care of by jess. “i always wanted to sail away and see the world or just escape, whichever came first,” she says, staring up at the stars. junhyeok already cares for her like a little sister and it’s been a week. “i was almost glad when the world ended, y’know?”

junhyeok nods because yeah, he kind of does.

  
  
  
  


he spends a solid six months with jess. he’s taking her to france. she had been taking french in school, she says, and she’ll learn quick enough. she’s a veritable genius, and he hopes that she can do something good in the world.

“thank you,” jess says suddenly when they first sight land. over the past few months, junhyeok has taught her to sail, to fish, to guess the seagull’s thoughts, to ration food, to hang from one arm by the top of the mast, to speak basic korean if she ever needs it. it’s been kinda nice having someone to mentor. when he took younghyun home, the boy was too distraught and focused to be taught anything. he’s confident that jess will probably get a boat of her own someday and put that big brain of hers to use.

“you’re welcome,” junhyeok says. “i hope this time has been beneficial to you.”

jess stands taller now. she’s tan and even more freckled, and she ties certain knots better than junhyeok and knows how to fend off hungry seagulls.

“i hope to see you again one day,” he adds after a few minutes of silence, as they draw closer to land and jess gets visibly more excited.

“i’m hoping to stay in france for a while,” she says, turning to him. “but if i can find a boat--”

“--maybe we’ll pass each other on the ocean,” junhyeok finishes. “i..i’d like that, i think.”

jess beams at him.

  
  
  


he does not cry when she ties the boat to the pier and curious townspeople are already congregating. junhyeok needs to deliver those australian letters and he doesn’t speak french, not even a little bit, so he isn’t going ashore.

“i’m going to miss you,” jess says before she steps off. “you’re like the big brother i never had.”

“i’ll miss you too,” junhyeok says, completely sincerely.

he is caught off guard when she hugs him, fierce and tight, and he can only imagine what the townspeople are thinking right now, but he hugs her right back and waves to her as he sails right back off.

damn, he’s missed human contact.

  
  
  
  
  


junhyeok played the piano when he was little.

his grandmother paid for lessons when he was two, and three, and four, and he was actually pretty decent. she had an idea to make him into one of those kids on youtube that plays impressive sonatas and stuff and make a little money that way. it was going fairly well until his aunt died, and then a year later his father dug out the old boat from storage and quit his job and sailed onto the ocean and took junhyeok with him and they never did quite come back.

when he had successfully delivered younghyun, he had stayed a bit longer than he usually did on land, long enough to hear sungjin and younghyun playing guitar and something else he couldn’t identify together. something about the music...unnerved him.

he hadn’t realized why until a month later, in the middle of the atlantic during a particularly treacherous storm. it was taking everything he had to not capsize and drown, and then suddenly it hit him.

junhyeok had been listening to the music of the ocean for so long, something he had so little control over, that it kind of hurt to remember making his own music as a tiny kid. he only had snippets, but he remembered his grandmother praising him, and he remembered his teacher giving him little caramel candies for doing well, and he remembered writing his own song. just one, and it was terrible, but it was also  _ his _ .

for the first time since...ever, junhyeok had felt just the tiniest bit of resentment directed at his father, for taking him away from something that had the potential to grow, for taking him away from his family and his piano and caramel candies.

just the tiniest bit.

  
  
  
  


he delivers the australian mail. the ones who got out are shocked as he regales them with tales of the village, embellishing it a little, making the raids seem a little less bad, the village a little more prosperous, the people a little happier. hey, it’s not like anyone’s gonna be able to call him out on it. might as well paint as kind a picture as possible.

(the shining eyes of the little african boy pop into his mind as he stocks up on food and cleans out his water filter. “ _ you are hope _ ,” he had said. junhyeok considers this, now, telling these people that their friends, their family, their community, is doing alright, and he thinks, shit, maybe i am.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


“do you ever need a home?” sungjin asked him once.

it was when he went back to visit and gave them all presents and tattooed sungjin and younghyun’s wrists. junhyeok had been unable to sleep after actually tattooing. sungjin’s mother had recognized it and made him a cup of tea and kissed his forehead and left him alone. sungjin had come back downstairs, still staring at the tattoo with a kind of wonder.

“nah,” junhyeok had answered easily. “i got a pretty good thing going on. i’m good by myself, good with my boat.”

sungjin had stared out the window, then abruptly snapped his gaze back to junhyeok. “as long as you’re happy, then.”

  
  
  


after he drops off the australian mail, junhyeok sails out away from land and then just sits there for several hours, talking out loud to the seagull, and he remembers that conversation with sungjin and looks around him at the endless water and, slowly, he smiles.

“i do have a home,” he says. the seagull caws and flies up to the top of the mast. “it’s everywhere. it’s the whole goddamn world.”

  
  
  
  


junhyeok avoids the u.s. as much as possible. it’s even worse than australia. the interior is full of drugs and rape and gangs and murder and weapons and death. nobody makes it out of there alive. on the coasts, he can skip around and deliver mail and get human interaction, but he never stays there for very long.

the seagull makes him go.

okay, that’s not exactly true. it’s just that junhyeok’s always liked l.a., even after the world ended. it was still sunny there, still postcard-perfect, and he kind of liked to fool himself that somewhere it was okay still; somewhere, it hadn’t fallen apart.

rationally, he knows that there are plenty of other places that are doing better and are much more okay, but he did kind of like the way the world used to be. l.a. is the easiest place to remember that.

he spends a week there, and at the end of it, two boys show up on bikes at the end of the pier, standing in between him and his boat. they’re both korean, and both sort of look like they’ve been through hell and back. the seagull is perched right between them, staring junhyeok down just as fiercely as the boys.

“hello?” junhyeok asks warily.

“you’re the sailor guy, right?” the taller boy asks. junhyeok thinks he might even be taller than junhyeok himself. “you can take us out of here, right?”

“well…” junhyeok hedges.

“we look tougher than we are,” the other boy says, uncrossing his arms and holding his hand out for a handshake. “we survived the interior, that’s why.”

“you  _ survived _ the  _ interior _ ?” junhyeok asks incredulously. the silly part of him wants to bow and grovel at their feet because clearly he is looking at gods.

“barely. still not sure how. i’m wonpil,” the second boy says. he wiggles his fingers. “i won’t bite, i promise.”

junhyeok hesitantly takes his hand and shakes. the boy’s palm is calloused and crisscrossed with scars. he shudders to think of how those scars might have come to be. “i’m junhyeok.”

“we know,” the tall guy says. he tangles his fingers with wonpil’s once the handshake ends. “jae.”

“nice to meet you two,” junhyeok says. he’s thinking, hard. “i don’t know if i could fit three people in my boat, and i’d definitely need to get more food, and you wouldn’t be able to take your bikes, but yeah, we could try, i guess.”

wonpil’s face breaks into relief and he turns to jae, burying his face in jae’s chest, shoulders shaking. jae glares at a bewildered junhyeok over wonpil’s head. “that would be fantastic. want help getting food? we can sell the bikes.”

  
  
  
  


“anywhere specific you would like to go?” junhyeok asks once they’ve taken off. his boat is sitting low in the water, but the seagull likes jae and wonpil, and he can see the hardened desperation in both of them. he can’t just say no.

“home,” wonpil says. he’s trailing his fingers in the water. jae’s lying next to him with his head in wonpil’s lap.

“where would be home, exactly?”

“he comes from south korea,” jae explains. “his family came here right before the world ended and he would like to go back, and, even though i’m absolutely shit at korean, i...would like to go with him.”

“i could teach you korean,” junhyeok says. “and i know just the perfect place.”

**Author's Note:**

> jess is my queen ngl
> 
> and ik i said that jaepil would just be off having their own adventures but then i made the u.s. scary and i wanted to connect it and i was like "that would be perfect. imma do it."
> 
> thank you for reading! please leave kudos or a comment if you enjoyed, it makes me smile :)
> 
> hmu on tumblr @bestfluteninja
> 
> and now im going to write more of my jaepil spinoff


End file.
